Economy
Refuting the ancient myth of overpopulation

From LifeSiteNews
By Aidan Grogan
Recent findings decimate the Malthusian outlook and render advocacy of population control not only ill-informed and inexcusable, but frankly anti-human.
(American Institute for Economic Research) — Prince Philip once said, “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, to contribute something to solving overpopulation.” The late Duke of Edinburgh passed away in 2021, but the hysterical sentiment he expressed about overpopulation lives on.
A YouGov poll found that overpopulation concerns are widespread among adults across the planet, with nearly half of sampled Americans believing that the world’s population is too high. This view is shared by 76 percent of Hungarians and 69 percent of Indians, according to the poll.
Overpopulation and ecological disasters have been the themes of numerous blockbuster movies, including ZPD (1972), Soylent Green (1973), Idiocracy (2006), and Elysium (2013). Mainstream news outlets have repeatedly promoted the apocalyptic idea to the public, with headlines such as “Science proves kids are bad for Earth. Morality suggests we stop having them” (NBC News). The progressive magazine Fast Company released a video titled “Why having kids is the worst thing you can do for the planet.”
The theory of overpopulation, and the collectivist idea that human reproduction must be limited, even by force, is nothing new. It first appeared in the ancient Mesopotamian Atrahasis epic, where the gods control the human population by infertility, infanticide, and appointing a priest class to limit childbirth.
Plato and Aristotle both endorsed a form of proto-eugenics and population control. In The Republic, Socrates and Glaucon conclude that an owner controlling the breeding of his dogs and birds to prevent their degeneration should also apply to the human species. The guardians would be tasked with deciding who is allowed to reproduce and who should be prohibited from having offspring. In the Politics, Aristotle advocated for state-mandated abortions of children with deformities or in cases where couples are having too many children and contributing to overpopulation.
The decline of Greek civilization in the second century BCE was not a consequence of an excess number of births, but precisely the opposite. Polybius attributed the downfall of Greece in his time to a decay of population which emptied out the cities and resulted in a failure of productiveness. It was not warfare and pestilence which reduced the birth rate, but decadence. The idle men of Greece, according to Polybius, were more interested in money and pleasure than marriage and child-rearing.
Two millennia later, English economist Thomas Malthus resurrected the old Mesopotamian myth with his 1798 An Essay on the Principle of Population. Malthus claimed that population growth increases geometrically while food production increases only arithmetically, which he believed would lead to widespread famine if the rapid propagation of humanity were not obstructed.
He identified two checks, one natural and one human-induced, which could keep population growth limited: preventive checks, such as delayed marriage or sexual abstinence, that stabilize the birth rate and evade the natural calamities of positive checks – famines, pestilences, earthquakes, floods, etc. – which represent nature’s striking back against the pressures of unhindered population growth.
Malthus preferred the former, but if unsuccessful, supported appalling and brutal depopulation measures. He suggested policies to “make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague.” He also recommended banning “specific remedies for ravaging diseases.”
In 1859, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species argued that species evolved gradually from a common ancestor. His follow-up The Descent of Man posited that humans descended from their ape-like past through a process of sexual selection that favored the stronger, more intelligent genes. Darwin said that his evolutionary theory “is the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms.”
READ: U.S. birth rate hit record low last year, signaling surge in childlessness
Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, used Darwin’s theory of evolution to develop eugenics – a pseudo-scientific theory that the human race could be improved through controlled breeding.
Subsidized by some of the largest philanthropic organizations in the United States, including the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Institution, eugenics was embraced by many leaders of the American progressive movement, who favored involuntary sterilization and immigration restriction.
Margaret Sanger, the founder of the American Birth Control League – later to be renamed Planned Parenthood – denigrated charity and referred to the poor as “human waste.” She and her companions considered several names for their movement, such as “neo-Malthusianism,” “population control,” and “race control,” before finally settling on “birth control.”
The eugenicists’ fervent collectivism and disregard for America’s founding principles affirming the inherent dignity and rights of every individual were best expressed through Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race, in which he wrote:
Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilization of such adults as are themselves of no value to the community. The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race.
Eugenics laws were implemented across the United States beginning with Indiana in 1907. By the Second World War, around 60,000 Americans had undergone sterilization.
In Britain, eugenics was enthusiastically championed by socialists such as John Maynard Keynes, George Bernard Shaw, and H.G. Wells. Keynes wrote an outline for a book called Prolegomena to a New Socialism, in which he listed “eugenics, population” as “chief preoccupations of the state.”
Eugenics – at least under that official title – began to fade after the harsh realities of the Holocaust were unveiled, but the Malthusian presuppositions which undergirded their movement never vanished.
Stanford biologist Paul R. Ehrlich’s 1968 book The Population Bomb re-invigorated the Malthusian craze for a new generation, predicting imminent worldwide famines and other catastrophes due to overpopulation. In the prologue, he wrote: “We can no longer afford merely to treat the symptom of the cancer of population growth; the cancer itself must be cut out. Population control is the only answer.”
That same year, a group of European scientists concerned about the future of the planet founded an NGO called the Club of Rome. Their first major publication, Limits to Growth (1972), attacked the pursuit of material gain and continuous economic expansion. Two of the Club of Rome’s most prominent members openly declared in their 1991 book The First Global Revolution that humanity is the real enemy:
In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill… All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
At the time of the publication of Ehrlich’s doomsday book and the Club of Rome’s founding, the world’s population stood at 3.6 billion, and nearly half of people worldwide were living in poverty. Over the next five decades, the global population more than doubled to 7.7 billion, yet fewer than 9 percent of people remain in poverty today, and famines have virtually disappeared.
Ehrlich’s hypothesis was rejected by economist Julian Simon in his 1981 book The Ultimate Resource, in which he argued that a rising number of “skilled, spirited, and hopeful people” results in more ingenuity, less scarcity, and lower costs in the long run. In other words, the larger the human population, the greater the collective brain power our species may wield to innovate, overcome problems, and benefit everyone through increased abundance. The ultimate resource, according to Simon, is people.
Recent research from Gale L. Pooley and Marian L. Tupy has vindicated Simon’s optimistic view. For every one-percent increase in population, commodity prices tend to fall by around one percent. In the years 1980-2017, the planet’s resources became 380 percent more abundant.
These findings decimate the Malthusian outlook and render advocacy of population control not only ill-informed and inexcusable, but frankly anti-human. The ecological cataclysms predicted by Ehrlich and the Club of Rome haven’t come true. Nature hasn’t struck back against a rapidly increasing population in any manner anticipated by Malthus.
As former U.S. Department of Energy undersecretary for science Steven E. Koonin pointed out in his 2021 book Unsettled, U.N. and U.S. government climate data show the following: 1) humans have had no detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century, 2) Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than it was 80 years ago, and 3) the net economic impact of human-induced climate change will be minimal through at least the end of this century.
Pooley and Tupy, however, caution that population growth alone is not enough to generate what they term “superabundance,” as they titled their recent book. The innovation required to sustain an ever-increasing world population demands economic and personal freedom. Collectivism and central planning will only restrict the human ingenuity, ideas, and enterprises that will pave the way toward a brighter, more prosperous future.
It is certainly time to lay to rest Malthusian theory and the overpopulation hysteria it has aroused. We must avoid the cynical outlook on humanity which regards us as net destroyers, a viral pathogen ravaging the earth, and instead opt for the more positive – and true – vision of human beings and human destiny. We are net creators.
Reprinted with permission from the American Institute for Economic Research.
Alberta
Pierre Poilievre – Per Capita, Hardisty, Alberta Is the Most Important Little Town In Canada

From Pierre Poilievre
Business
Why it’s time to repeal the oil tanker ban on B.C.’s north coast

The Port of Prince Rupert on the north coast of British Columbia. Photo courtesy Prince Rupert Port Authority
From the Canadian Energy Centre
By Will Gibson
Moratorium does little to improve marine safety while sending the wrong message to energy investors
In 2019, Martha Hall Findlay, then-CEO of the Canada West Foundation, penned a strongly worded op-ed in the Globe and Mail calling the federal ban of oil tankers on B.C.’s northern coast “un-Canadian.”
Six years later, her opinion hasn’t changed.
“It was bad legislation and the government should get rid of it,” said Hall Findlay, now director of the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy.
The moratorium, known as Bill C-48, banned vessels carrying more than 12,500 tonnes of oil from accessing northern B.C. ports.
Targeting products from one sector in one area does little to achieve the goal of overall improved marine transport safety, she said.
“There are risks associated with any kind of transportation with any goods, and not all of them are with oil tankers. All that singling out one part of one coast did was prevent more oil and gas from being produced that could be shipped off that coast,” she said.
Hall Findlay is a former Liberal MP who served as Suncor Energy’s chief sustainability officer before taking on her role at the University of Calgary.
She sees an opportunity to remove the tanker moratorium in light of changing attitudes about resource development across Canada and a new federal government that has publicly committed to delivering nation-building energy projects.
“There’s a greater recognition in large portions of the public across the country, not just Alberta and Saskatchewan, that Canada is too dependent on the United States as the only customer for our energy products,” she said.
“There are better alternatives to C-48, such as setting aside what are called Particularly Sensitive Sea Areas, which have been established in areas such as the Great Barrier Reef and the Galapagos Islands.”
The Business Council of British Columbia, which represents more than 200 companies, post-secondary institutions and industry associations, echoes Hall Findlay’s call for the tanker ban to be repealed.
“Comparable shipments face no such restrictions on the East Coast,” said Denise Mullen, the council’s director of environment, sustainability and Indigenous relations.
“This unfair treatment reinforces Canada’s over-reliance on the U.S. market, where Canadian oil is sold at a discount, by restricting access to Asia-Pacific markets.
“This results in billions in lost government revenues and reduced private investment at a time when our economy can least afford it.”
The ban on tanker traffic specifically in northern B.C. doesn’t make sense given Canada already has strong marine safety regulations in place, Mullen said.
Notably, completion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion in 2024 also doubled marine spill response capacity on Canada’s West Coast. A $170 million investment added new equipment, personnel and response bases in the Salish Sea.
“The [C-48] moratorium adds little real protection while sending a damaging message to global investors,” she said.
“This undermines the confidence needed for long-term investment in critical trade-enabling infrastructure.”
Indigenous Resource Network executive director John Desjarlais senses there’s an openness to revisiting the issue for Indigenous communities.
“Sentiment has changed and evolved in the past six years,” he said.
“There are still concerns and trust that needs to be built. But there’s also a recognition that in addition to environmental impacts, [there are] consequences of not doing it in terms of an economic impact as well as the cascading socio-economic impacts.”
The ban effectively killed the proposed $16-billion Eagle Spirit project, an Indigenous-led pipeline that would have shipped oil from northern Alberta to a tidewater export terminal at Prince Rupert, B.C.
“When you have Indigenous participants who want to advance these projects, the moratorium needs to be revisited,” Desjarlais said.
He notes that in the six years since the tanker ban went into effect, there are growing partnerships between B.C. First Nations and the energy industry, including the Haisla Nation’s Cedar LNG project and the Nisga’a Nation’s Ksi Lisims LNG project.
This has deepened the trust that projects can mitigate risks while providing economic reconciliation and benefits to communities, Dejarlais said.
“Industry has come leaps and bounds in terms of working with First Nations,” he said.
“They are treating the rights of the communities they work with appropriately in terms of project risk and returns.”
Hall Findlay is cautiously optimistic that the tanker ban will be replaced by more appropriate legislation.
“I’m hoping that we see the revival of a federal government that brings pragmatism to governing the country,” she said.
“Repealing C-48 would be a sign of that happening.”
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Pierre Poilievre – Per Capita, Hardisty, Alberta Is the Most Important Little Town In Canada